King's County

KING'S COUNTY

James Carrick

Published by James Carrick at
Smashwords

Copyright 2014 James Carrick

King's County

Chapter 1 – AK/WY

::::
Well, you know it's a great thing and we’re all so thrilled
and excited for him and for everyone, really, and we love these
sort of celebrations of what it really means to be truly American -
and, of course, we here are no longer Americans in a technical
sense but in the spirit and the attitude, that hard working
attitude, putting God and family before everything, and doing what
needs to be done - in that sense I think that, yes, we are still
American up here, very much so, and we take these traditional
American values very much to heart.

ANCHORAGE PRESS QTLY: They’ve been gone
so long. Now that there is no space program, what is next for them?
Will they be placed in the Territorial Army? Or do you have other
plans for them?

GOVERNOR:
Gee, I can't say as to that. We have experts who
will analyze and reorient the men, catch them up you might say, and
I'm sure they'll figure out what is, what is the best and most
appropriate course for these brave heroes. We here are just so,
pleased to have them, it's a real honor, and a joy, to have this
opportunity to incorporate them into our fold, if however briefly,
during this exciting and challenging time.

*

Space was mostly a lot of nothing but
the time passed quickly. Ed and I took pills that slowed us down.
They let us watch the universe at high speed. Twenty-six years we
were out there. We had a big window to look out of, or what
effectively was a window, and we had each other for company and
some games and a library. It wasn’t too bad. We slept a lot, a
whole month at a time.

There was another pill to take before
landing to speed us back up to normal. But by the time we decided
to dig out the little diamond shaped things, our spacecraft had
already decelerated to reenter the atmosphere and was arcing over
the tundra of Northern Canada. Reentry was over in seconds, for us.
We just let it happen.

*

Before we left the Earth for the Moon -
we used the Moon as a second stage base to launch from. It has .26
of the gravity of Earth which I think had something to with it.
Being the flight engineer didn't mean I knew everything – anyway,
before we left they chipped us, put a chip under the skin of our
lower back. There's a layer of fat there that protects the kidneys
and it protected that chip, too.

When I say chip that's just what we
called it. It was more like a computer with a chemical processor.
It could take in dead cells or little bits of what was floating
around in your blood and from them it could generate hormones or
glucose or amino acids or whatever other stuff that it figured you
needed.

What this meant was that we didn't need
to worry about nutrition or our diet or our health at all. This
meant we ate what we wanted up there, didn't need to exercise,
didn't need to do anything. The chip kept us in top shape, mentally
and physically.

Of course, they took the chip out in
the post flight medical. I got to see it while lying on my stomach
on the OR table. For being in my body 26 years, it looked brand
new.

"Captain, let me help you
up."

He was a beefy guy, the orderly, with a
greasy crew cut and hairy arms. I waved him off. I didn't care what
he wanted. It felt wrong.

Another nurse, a chick, took my hand
and led me back to my suite. I had a rest before doing interviews
for the rest of the day.

"Waller? Well, welcome back. Long day,
huh? This one will be brief. We want to help you get reoriented,
sort of fill in some of the blanks.

"I've got a few things prepared for
you. Uh, here, you're originally from Seattle I see." - smile –
"Here we have a list, arranged by date. We've got Seahawks on one
side and Mariners on the other. Their win-loss records during your
voyage, stats...and here's a separate summary of
highlights."

Her smile faded. She didn't like my
reaction. I blame the long trip and the drugs, 26 years worth,
followed by the unexplained injections on our arrival, then the
surgery anesthetic, then the never ending interviews all done dead
sober and exhausted. They wouldn't even let me have a cup of coffee
yet. It all got to me, I guess, and I pulled my cock out of the
hospital gown without really realizing what I was doing.

&

"Looking good so far, Captain." He was
young, younger than me, not including my long vacation. He shined a
flashlight looking thing in my eyes and glanced at the
readout.

"You're young for a doctor. The Air
Force still makes you guys go through med school,
right?"

"Oh. Well, I'm holding at 19 for
awhile. Anything unusual: unexplained smells, any strange voices?
Auditory hallucinations?"

"Nothing like that. What did you mean
by holding at 19?"

I already had a good idea what he
meant, though, and he told me what I suspected. Ed and I took the
same stuff in space. It preserves your genes or chromosomes or
something. Your cells renew better, last longer and function
better. I'm not exactly sure how it works, but if you take it, you
don't get older.

*

AK

Anderson Base

October 18, 2092

Col. Henry E.L. Jackson-Little, AK
Territorial Army.

Men! We face before us an
amazing challenge. From the fields of Marathon to Austerlitz to the
Argonne Forest, we stand on the shoulders of history and look
forward.

Duty. Sacrifice. Loyalty.
These are not just words. To our breed, the fighting man, they
describe a way of life, a calling. A greater calling that we are to
know in our hearts and to shoulder the burden of which without
complaint but with great pride.

Preparedness. Readiness.
Courage. Born of our legacy; these words preserve our
creed.

Decisiveness. Poise.
Organization. This is our mantra, bred into our bones. Victory -
long sought. Hard sought. Inevitable. You men make up the greatest
army in history. The doggedness of our fighting spirit - never
exceeded in the modern era - will see us to the end of the day. The
day, men, when we retire to the old hall where the heroes rest,
weary, but whole in spirit and pure of heart.

*

After I graduated from college in 2062,
I quickly found out that the world was not waiting for me. For two
whole years I looked for a job, one that wasn't a sales scam or a
pyramid scheme or a Ponzi scheme. I needed something that actually
paid a decent salary or that at least gave the opportunity to get
one later, and not 10 years later, either. It was frustrating. I
had a degree in something called Business Statistics but it might
as well have been in whaling or fencing as far as the jobs it got
me.

So I did what a lot of guys without
wealth or connections or talent did and joined the military, the
Air Force, and they had me playing video games.

*

AK 2092

Back to Earth, back to life in the
military, it was the Army this time around. A liaison, the last and
highest ranking of my interviewers, had recommended the Alaskan
Territorial. She had a friendly, persuasive sort of way about her
so I went along. I didn't even think to ask if there were any other
choices.

They had me starting over as a
Lieutenant and let me skip basic training. I easily passed the
physical, scoring in the top 5%, thanks to the lingering effects of
the chip no doubt, and I checked out on the weapons exam. Only a
half day at the range was enough for me to get back to an expert
rating. I knew weapons. My squadron trained on them all the time in
the Air Force though we were really nothing but joystick
jockeys.

So only three days after getting
released by the remnants of the Air Force Space Command, downgraded
back to Lieutenant, I found myself in the Alaskan wilderness,
camped out on a glacier.

"None of you guys will have a drink
with me?"

The tent we were in was pretty amazing.
Folded up, it fit in the back of our rover with plenty of room left
for our packs and rifles. It easily accommodated my five man
squad.

“No one?”

They just looked around at each other
like they were trying to figure something out. The Staff Sgt
answered for the group,

"No, sir! Consumption of alcohol is
strictly disallowed in theater." The Sgt got a twinkle in his eyes
and added grinning, "and I will have to report any soldier,
regardless of rank, who violates this rule."

The other soldiers erupted in laughter.
I got the idea. They thought I was testing them, trying to trick
them into breaking the rules. Of course, I played along.

I was miserable out on maneuvers and it
wasn't because of the low temperatures. I barely noticed the cold.
Our battle uniforms self regulated temp and humidity and they were
self cleaning. The tent was more comfortable than anyone could
expect. It was these meat-heads that I couldn't stand being
around.

Note:

In 2055 the proxy war broke out between
the Eastern Alliance and United States and it was still going on.
Out on the western edge of Alaska, we were operating near the
battlefield but there was no way in hell we would ever actually go
into it. It would be certain, probably nearly immediate
death.

The boundaries of the war were firmly
set in '57 as a perfect square, 250 km per side, covering part of
Siberia and Alaska. Rumors were that deep underneath the surface
was a trove of valuable minerals, though which ones they were was
unclear. If it was actually minerals being contested in the war
nobody ever really knew. Nobody I knew ever knew anything political
like that for certain. Everybody seemed to have their own take,
their own opinion, and they always seemed to be changing
it.

As I remember, the initial cause of the
war was a dispute over Iran and some of those countries in Central
Asia. They didn't want in the Eastern Alliance and they didn't want
anything to do with us either. The details are lost to me but in
the end, before anything got too far out of hand, we got the Proxy
War, fully mechanized and remotely operated, with no unpopular
human casualties. For whatever reason, the war was hashed out in
that square of land night and day, everyday, with never any lasting
victories for either side.

*

WY 2064

Only a week after I had signed my name
at the recruiter's office, the Air Force put me on a plane to
Oregon for training. 4 months later I was an officer and assigned
to a squadron out in Wyoming. My idle post-college life already
felt like a distant memory.

The operating base was on some of the
worst land you could possibly find anywhere. Blazing hot in the
summer, unbelievably cold in the winter, flat all around with dull
brown mountains in the distance, no trees just these scrubby little
bushes full of snakes and scorpions – in all of this natural
splendor, the base itself was nothing but a few old cinder block
buildings with a transmitter tower and dish.

There was a town of maybe 30 people a
half hour away by truck. Under wartime conditions, we weren't
allowed to interact with the residents - our base was supposed to
be a secret - but, with typical military efficiency, we could still
shop at their little general store.

Whenever we went into town we’d buy up
all of the beer. The brand didn't matter, whatever they had, we'd
buy. The next time around they'd have ordered more and we’d buy all
of it, too. The old couple running the place never asked how much
we wanted. There would just be a little bit more for sale than the
last time. After a few months it got ridiculous. We had cases
stored all over the barracks, under the bunks, along the walls of
the break room. But we couldn't back down.

*

AK 2092

It was slow going through the snow.
There were no roads out here. We had a plow, a self-directed
tracked thing that traveled 5 to 10 meters ahead of us clearing the
way.

The idea was that we would trek through
the frozen wilds, our platoon of noble warriors, and converge with
a hundred or so other platoons and their trucks for a big meet up
on perimeter of the battlefield.